Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Mānana (Rabbit Island), a small islet located off the eastern
windward shore of the island of Oahu, between Makapuu Point and
Waimanalo: photo by Vernon Brown, 25 April 2009

That’s where I used to live.Close to Rabbit Island. That’s whereI used to sleep. Under that ironwoodat the end of that beach access—Hihimanu Street. All the old naupakagone now where cubbyholes existed—dry, windless places—just one or twowhere I’d find him crashed, reeking,needing to hold onto me like a manin the whole bunch of trouble that he was.

Thank you very much, Curtis, I've always respected your eye anyway, and now more than ever...

(The blogging has become the last ditch keep-one's mind-off-it-all concentration enterprise at a time when the gaping hole in the head from the infamous auto hit has linked up with the dolorous injury last month to the innocent genius of the house, who has two broken toes and numerous torn ligaments, and so... well...)

But in any case and notwithstanding such tiresome notices, these collaborations owe all their spark (of course) to the redoubtable SKA, so due props are in order, without further ado.

By the by, for those who don't already have it bookmarked, Susan keeps a blog, albeit with total unheard-of-among-poets-and-bloggers reticence and modesty (yay!! modesty), here.

Her Rabbit Island poem arrived in response to, and perhaps makes a certain extra sensitive sort of sense (by extending an eternal in-the-dark dialogue) in relation to this rainy night fire in an iron barrel ballad from the adjacent rim of the mainland.

"Mānana Island is an uninhabited islet located 0.75 mi (1.21 km) off Kaupō Beach, near Makapuʻu at the eastern end of the Island of Oʻahu in the Hawaiian Islands. In the Hawaiian language, mānana means "buoyant". The islet is commonly referred to as Rabbit Island, because its shape as seen from the nearby Oʻahu shore looks something like a rabbit's head and because it was once inhabited by introduced rabbits. The rabbit colony was established by John Adams Cummins in the 1880s when he ran the nearby Waimānalo plantation.The rabbits were eradicated about a hundred years later because they were destroying the native ecosystem, an important seabird breeding area.

"Mānana is a tuff cone with two vents or craters. The highest point on the islet rises to 361 ft (110 m). The island is 2,319 ft (707 m) long and 2,147 ft (654 m) wide and has an area of about 63 acres (25 ha). Mānana’s only sand beach is a small storm beach on the west to south-west (leeward) side of the islet. This sand deposit, located above the reach of the normal waves, is about 30 ft (9.1 m) wide and curves around to the western side of the island.

"Mānana is a State Seabird Sanctuary—home to over 10,000 Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, 80,000 Sooty Terns, 20,000 Brown Noddys, 5-10 Bulwer's Petrels, and 10-15 Red-tailed Tropicbirds, and numerous Hawaiian Monk Seals. It is illegal to land on the islet without permission from the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources."

Rabbit Island made me think a bit of a kinder, gentler, greener, milder, more-happy-tiki-bunny simulation of the swirling-wind-and-wave-swept dragon's tail of rock (in aerial view) that is The Farallons.

One supposes the sea birds know both places by names we shall never know.

These are beautiful shots of Rabbit Island (Manana)and of Waimanalo Beach--a sacred place. Shown here, I long for it in anguish until I am there worried about my burn, beating traffic, and putting off those thoughts.